


Lifeline

by ephemeralfangirl



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Happy Ending, Light Angst, emotional link
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 12:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10663095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralfangirl/pseuds/ephemeralfangirl
Summary: There is no worse terror to Kara than feeling alone inside her own soul.





	Lifeline

**Author's Note:**

> Entry for the Supercat Week day 3, the prompt was feelings.

The rhythmic beeping was both unnerving and soothing. The beeps themselves brought a reprieve, it was the silence in between that drove her mad, because what would happen if the next one didn’t come? The question was harder to ignore at this time of the night with Carter fast asleep in the bed next to Cat’s. She knew the monitor was mostly for her oxygen intake rather than her heartbeat, but the knowledge didn’t do anything for the fear clutching at her gut. She turned to look at Carter, pulling the bed an inch closer. She’d push them together until there was only enough room for her chair between them, but it still felt too far. She wanted both Grants in sight at all times. Possibly for the rest of their lives. 

Kara leaned forward and inched Carter’s blanket higher toward his chin and tucked it in softly around his shoulders. She passed her thumb on the scrape on his chin, wishing she could erase it. She turned to Cat and tightened her grip on the hand she’d been holding since she had come in the room. Kara was afraid she’d disappear if Kara let her go. She’d almost lost her. A new wave of dread washed through Kara at the thought, she knew she’d never forget the panic she had felt.

—

Standing at the DEO in the lab, Kara was talking to Alex about a much-needed sister night. She was about to counter with her movie list when she felt it. That place in her heart where she was always aware of Cat’s feelings was filled with terror and was stealing her breath, making her heart beat so fast she thought she would pass out if she could. She leaned forward with her hands on her knees until her legs could support her again and she screamed at Winn, running toward her exit: “Find Cat, she’s in trouble.”

She lifted up in the air and aimed herself toward Australia. She still had access to Cat’s agenda and she always made sure she had a general idea of where the woman was at all times. Kara went straight up, beyond jetliner reach and flew faster than she had ever flown before. She reached Australia faster than it had taken Winn to blink. She hovered over Sydney, impatiently waiting for him to locate Cat. He was too slow. She stretched her hearing until she heard the familiar cadence of Cat’s heart. It was beating too fast and the noises around came straight out of Kara’s worst nightmares. She could hear Cat scream Carter’s name in a way that would be impossible to forget, then metal crunching, bones breaking.

She found the intersection and her heart stopped for a beat before she rushed forward. The impact had already thrown Cat in her air, her body curved gracefully as she fell to the pavement in what Kara saw as slow motion. She looked small and breakable, an incongruous splash of colour against the grey of the asphalt. Carter was between two cars and he wasn’t moving. Knowing she couldn’t leave either alone, she quickly X-rayed them both to look for spinal cord injury and when they seemed OK for that, she took them in her arms and flew to the closest hospital. 

Kara burst through the doors, the cape swirling and making her immediately recognizable to the medical personnel. Cat and Carter were taken behind closed doors and she was alone in a corridor, standing still against the rush of people around her. She breathed slowly, seeking the place she was connected to Cat where, to her consternation, she had found no feelings. She tried to concentrate harder, to focus every particle of her body onto that spot, but the emptiness inside, that weird feeling of being alone in her soul remained. It hadn’t been closed since she was 13 years old and it left her bereft. 

When she was a child on krypton, there had always been a block where the connection was supposed to be, she didn’t have the phantom emotions of her soulmate. She had been unable to play with her friends, trying to match feelings to see if they were the One. She had been missing a part of herself. When she had asked her parents, they had glossed over the thing, telling her that it simply meant that her soulmate wasn’t born yet. They had made jokes about the future age difference, cradle robbing and the likes, but it hadn’t worried them. When she had landed, she had been overwhelmed by everything in this world, by getting her powers, and by her loss. The one thing she had found to alleviate the almost unbearable grief had been that, for the first time in her whole life, that link was open. She had someone.

Adjusting to having someone’s emotions along with hers had been a little odd at first, but she had learned to both tune it out and focus on it. When she’d had trouble with people or at school or she had missed home more acutely than usual, she would block out her environment and focus only on the link. It had been an odd time as she didn’t understand the feelings her soulmate was experiencing, going from tiredness to irritation to terror to elation and endless wonder at a crazy pace. She had loved those moments the most and in those early years there had been so much of it. It was only after she’d known that Cat was her soulmate that she had realized that she had experienced Carter’s life through Cat’s eyes. The softness of Cat’s maternal feelings toward Carter had been the perfect balance to Kara’s anxiety, stress, and fear. It had been such a comfort to have that piece of beauty to hold on to at a time when the world had been harsh and unforgiving.

It had been quite early in her tenure as Cat’s assistant when she had figured out that Cat was her soulmate. She had done something quite good and her pride had matched Cat’s pleasure and she had known. She hadn’t dared speak on it because knowledge wasn’t power when it was one-sided. So she had waited, love and devotion blossoming and growing as the years went by.

She had felt the growing affection between them and Cat’s fear when she had started to develop a tender regard for her assistant. She had felt her surrender to it during Myriad, but there had been something else she hadn’t completely understood but it had coalesced into Cat’s leaving. 

Kara had been right back to being alone and concentrating on that link to feel less lonely. And here she was, fully alone for the first time in 13 years in a corridor, the soulmate she loved more than life itself hurt somewhere in this hospital and there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t even feel her.

Her com link rang in her ear and Alex was on the other end. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, there was a car and Cat was hit and she was in the air and then on the ground and her head bounced and I wasn’t fast enough to stop her from getting hurt,” the last came out small and painful.

“But you were there, Kara, and you got her help. She will be OK because of what you did, you have to believe that. But you can’t stay there.”

“I’m not leaving her!” everything she was rebelled at Alex’s suggestion.

“I’m not asking Kara Danvers to, I’m asking Supergirl. Come back, pick up so clothes and fly back. It’ll be a matter of seconds, a minute at the most, Kara. Be smart, you want to stay with Cat? Do it properly.”

She hated even the thought of leaving but she did it. In the blink of an eye, she went back to National City, picked up was she needed and she rushed back into the hospital, opened the doors in a panic.

“I’m looking for Cat and Carter Grant?” the nurse looked at her, baffled.

“And you are?”

“Her girlfriend,” Kara was a terrible liar, but she had wished it enough that the words slipped off her tongue with ease. The nurse appraised her while Kara squirmed.

“Miss Grant is still being examined, Carter Grant is waiting for an X-ray, you can sit with him.”

“Thank you,” Kara gratefully followed her to a curtained-off area. She hurried past the nurse when she noticed which bed was Carter’s.

“Kara!” She ran to the bed and she couldn’t stop herself from hugging him. She was reassured by the way he clung to her. “Are you OK? What did they say? What happened?”

“My arm hurts, but I’m OK. It’s all my fault,” big tears formed in his eyes and he put his face in the crook of Kara’s shoulder. She passed her fingers through the messy curls, relieved by the solidity of him in her arms.

“I’m sure it’s not,” she kissed the top of his head, glad that he was accepting her presence without question.

“It is. I dropped my ticket to the science museum in the street and I went to get it. I didn’t see the truck but mom did and she pushed me out of the way and she got hit instead of me,” the words ran into each other and Carter’s guilt came out in tears and he started shaking in her arms. 

Kara held him close, soothing him as best she could, but she knew that seeing his mom was really the only thing that would help. She rocked him gently until they were called for the X-ray. She put him in the wheelchair the hospital provided and insisted on wheeling him herself. She paced while they took his X-ray, terrified at not being with him. She passed a hand on his head when he was back in the corridor with her, ascertaining that he was really here. They waited until the doctor came with his diagnosis. The airline fracture needed to be put in a cast and she held his hand when they put it on. 

Through Carter’s treatment, her impatience to see Cat was getting out of hand. She paced when she was alone and she filled insurance papers accurately, but hastily, hoping expediting the task would get her faster to Cat’s side. She requested a double room so they could rest together. She was glad when they were led to the room.

Kara looked at her with her heart in her throat. The part of her where she should feel Cat was still muted. She looked at the nurse with worry on her face.

“She has three cracked ribs, a concussion and extensive bruising on the right side of her body and a few lacerations. Luckily, the truck that hit her was almost stopped. We have her on pretty strong pain killers, she’ll surface soon, but she’ll be a bit groggy,” the nurse said, as Kara held Carter’s hand, both of them staring at their universe lying too still on the bed.

“Thank you,” Kara dismissed her, wanting Carter to have privacy with his mother. He waited until the door was closed before going to his mother. He seemed to hesitate, eyeing the bruises and scrapes on Cat’s cheekbone. He looked at Kara in distress.

“You can touch her Carter, just be very gentle,” she whispered, almost afraid to wake Cat. 

She waited until he took his mother’s hand before moving the beds closer, unwilling to have to choose between Grants to watch. She brought Carter a chair and sat in the other one. She took Cat’s other hand between hers. Her fingers were freezing, so Kara brought her them to her lips and blew warm air gently, tenderly, as close to a kiss as she dared. She and Carter spent the evening in variations of this position, until his eyes started to droop and she ushered him to bed after ensuring he ate a few bites of the food he’d been brought.

\-- 

That had been four hours ago. She’d been sitting here since then, listening to the beeps, the soft hiss of the oxygen and monitoring that Cat was getting enough. She knew there was nothing else for her to do, but it still didn’t feel like enough. It felt like everything about this left her one second too late and too ineffective. There was nothing for her to punch, lift or restrain. She was the fastest woman in the universe and she still had no way of making time move faster. It was driving her crazy.

Kara sighed and then startled as she felt the fingers between hers twitch and the link reopened. She registered Cat’s confusion, her pain, her panic. Kara tightened her fingers around Cat’s.

“It’s OK, you’re OK, you’re in the hospital. Carter’s right here. He’s OK,” the relief they both felt brought Kara to tears. Cat struggled to focus on her, but Kara pointed to the bed next to her realizing her mistake when she saw Cat’s body twist and then her breath rush out in pain. “Don’t move, you have three cracked ribs.” 

Cat was still trying to look at Carter. “I need…” She tried to lift herself up.

“Hold still!” Glancing at the door, Kara lifted Carter’s bed and turned it so Cat could see her son. She put it down so Cat could watch him sleep. “He’s OK, you did good.”

It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but she knew that deep-seated urge to protect. Cat finally looked at her. “I saw you, when I fell.”

Kara’s eyes closed in pain. “I’m sorry I wasn’t fast enough.” Her secret didn’t matter, Cat knew, she’d always known. Cat’s squeezed her hand.

“You can’t stop what you don’t know, Kara,” there was absolution in Cat’s voice, but more than that, Kara felt the tenderness of her feelings, the joy at seeing her and so much love. Kara closed her eyes and kissed the back of Cat’s hand, her own relief too great for words.

“How did you know?” Cat was blinking slowly, but her eyes were on Kara’s face. She swallowed hard and revealed the last of her secrets.

“I felt your terror, I had to find you,” Kara was begging for an understanding she didn’t know Cat could give.

“Felt it how?”

“Kryptonians are linked to their…” Kara hesitated on the translation of the word. “Soulmate, I guess? From birth, we have a phantom impression of their feelings.”

Cat’s eyes widened a little and the tiniest, loveliest smile stretched her lips. “I’m your soulmate?”

A blush spread across Kara’s cheek. She had prepared for scorn and rejection, not the affection or the gratefulness she felt from Cat. “Yup.”

A wicked grin replaced Cat’s fond smile. “Come up here and say that again.”

Elation brought Kara forward and she put her lips on Cat’s for the first time. It felt like coming home and free-falling wrapped in the most wonderful taste she’d experienced in the galaxy. She pulled away from Cat and saw her cloudy eyes. “We’ll try this again when you’re not high on pain medication.”

“Oh, I’m very much not high,” She grunted.

“Oh Rao, are you in pain?! Let me get the nurse, maybe she can give you another dose,” Kara rose to her feet, reluctant to let go of Cat. “And when the Doctor gives you the all clear, you’ll fly home? So I can take care of you?”

“Home…” there was a contented hum coming from Cat. “Yes, I’m ready to come home.”

Kara’s smile lit up the night. She brought their hands up and kissed the back of Cat’s. “When you come home, would you have dinner with me?”

“Most people go on a date before they profess soulmate hood,” Cat’s amusement was clear.

“We’re not most people,” she spoke with more confidence than she felt and Cat chuckled before she groaned in pain. “Don’t laugh! Don’t move! I’ll be right back.”

She let go of Cat and dashed out to find a nurse, walking entirely too fast for a human, but she was in a hurry to get Cat better. They had a date to go on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!
> 
> Thanks to @elizadunc for the beta.


End file.
